My Little Princess

About Me

I'm a mom to a beautiful and so adorable little girl named Sam. Currently a SAHM, infatuated in Photography and a certified Photoshop addict! A freelance Mamarazzi aka Paparazzi to my princess...LOL! Loves to create different photo collage of her from birth up to present. I'm really hooked now @ digiscrapping and can't resist myself to do different layouts for my daughter, family and friend's photos. I'm still learning and very hopeful to design my own papers and theme kits someday. Thanks for visiting my site... Hugs!:)

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

In this tutorial, I'll explain how to create a three column template in Blogger layouts, using the Minima template as a starting point. The Minima template is the easiest Blogger template to customise, as this is the simplest two column template, and has few parameters regarding margins, padding and the like. Once you have developed the third column, it will then be easier to alter font-size, colours and such so leave this until later on. We're going to concentrate on the actual layout first.

First of all, set your template to Minima (not the stretch template, but any colour will do!), then follow these instructions: 1. Go to Template>Edit HTML, leaving the "Expand widget templates" box unchecked. 2. Now, find this section in the HTML code

Copy this entire section, and paste it directly below. We're going to change the elements I've highlighted in red to the following:

#left-sidebar-wrapper (this makes the css for this section unique) float: left (this will make the new sidebar float to the left of the main column)

This will provide the styling for the new sidebar element which we will create next.

3. Now, you need to find this section further down the page:Immedietly before this section, you should paste the following piece of code: Let me explain the elements of this code to help you understand what we've just done:

This section tells the browser that the left-sidebar element exists here, and to look in the css for the appropriate styling for this element.

This tells the browser the class of the sidebar element and all other elements (widgets) which may be included in this section. The ID of this element must be "left-sidebar" in order to make it unique, otherwie this would cause problems when viewing. It is preferred so that it will feature in the layout, even if no widgets are placed within it.

4. If you preview your template, you will notice that the right sidebar will be beneath the main section at the moment. This is because the outer-wrapper is still only wide enough to accomodate one sidebar. So now we need to expand the oputer wrapper to accomodate this new sidebar. Find this section in the HTML code:

6. At this point, you should save your template. At present, your new sidebar will not be seen as there are no widgets contained within it, though it will still be present in the markup of the page. Once you have saved your template, go to Template>Page elements in your Blogger dashboard. 7. Your layouts section should now look something like this:

You can now add a page element (or two) to your new left sidebar. 8. But we aren't quite finished yet! If you add anything to this left sidebar, you will probably notice that it jams right up to the main section, like this:

This is because there is no space defined between the left-sidebar and the main section. We need to create this space in the template's HTML. To do this, we will add a margin to the left hand side of the main posts section. Find the following code in your template's HTML and add the code defined in red:

This defines a margin space of 20px between the left-sidebar and the main column. You should also ensure you adjust thw width of the outer-wrapper from 880px to 900px to ensure the width of your blog is enough to accomodate this margin too. Either that, or you could reduce the width of your main column/a sidebar by 20px to serve the same purpose. Now, your previewed template should look more like this:

9. Finally, save your template and enjoy your new sidebar!The same principles described here can help you create a three column template from any Blogger template, though you may find that you'll need to adjust the width, margins and padding for your new sidebar in order for it to look the way you would like.Also, you can configure your new sidebar to float to the right, and have two sidebars on the right of the main column if you prefer. Simply set the CSS of your new sidebar to float: right; instead.

1 comment:

thanks for posting this about your blog. i'm going to try it. will you keep us posted on other things you do with this template? like header/banner, etc.? love to see what you come up with. thanks, have a great weekend. natalie nholbrook02@hotmail.com